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UCF lefties unite

A group of left-wing students almost pulled off the impossible last month: They pushed through a bill authorizing $20,000 for the socialist filmmaker Michael Moore to speak at a political rally Oct. 22. Incidentally, that's the same day gubernatorial candidates Bill McBride and Jeb Bush will square off in the university's Pegasus Ballroom.

Moore was supposed to upstage the mainstream candidates. Only he didn't sign the contract. The filmmaker, whose best-known work is Roger and Me, a 1989 documentary that skewers corporate America, said he wasn't accepting speaking engagements for the rest of the year, citing his mother's death and the opening of his new film, Bowling for Columbine.

The left-leaning student group, called the Progressive Council, is planning a full day of political speakers Oct. 22 from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and the AFL-CIO.

Though it might be the first time the UCF campus has had a slate of leftists on campus, don't look for the Golden Knights to suddenly turn progressive. Word around campus is that student senators will pay talk-show pundit Ann Coulter (author of Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right) $2,000 to speak in November.